Dr. Richard J. Davidson Of Healthy Minds Innovations: 5 Things We Can Each Do to Help Solve the Loneliness Epidemic
…If loneliness is the product of our mental outlook, it is therefore something that can be changed by transforming our mental outlook, along with our behavior.
You can: Proactively reach out to loved ones and focus on staying in the moment with our friends and family when we are able to get together.
Mentally extend thoughts and feelings of compassion to those around us — from the stranger driving in the car in the next lane over to a neighbor as they walk to their mailbox.
Train your mind in the skills of connection with meditation; and
Bring something positive and bridge the “connection gap” on social media. We recently launched #TheWorldWeMake in support of healing division in a highly charged, often negative space.
I had the distinct pleasure to interview Dr. Richard J. Davidson. Dr. Davidson is the Founder & Chief Visionary of Healthy Minds Innovations, as well as the Founder & Executive Director of Center for Healthy Minds.
Dr. Davidson received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in Psychology and has been at Wisconsin since 1984. He has published more than 440 articles, numerous chapters and reviews and edited 14 books. He is the author (with Sharon Begley) of “The Emotional Life of Your Brain” published by Penguin in 2012 and the co-author, with Daniel Goleman, of “Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body,” published by Penguin Books in 2017.
Dr. Davidson is the recipient of numerous awards for his research including the William James Fellow Award from the American Psychological Society as well as the year 2000 recipient of the most distinguished award for science given by the American Psychological Association — the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award. In 2006, Dr. Davidson was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time Magazine. He has also served on the Scientific Advisory Board at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences from 2011–2019 and was a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Mental Health 2014–2018. In 2017 he was elected to the National Academy of Medicine and in
2018 appointed to the Governing Board of UNESCO’s Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development (MGIEP).
Outside of his work in publishing and advising, Dr. Davidson, a friend and confidante of the Dalai Lama, has been the innovative founder and leader of the Center for Healthy Minds with his groundbreaking work studying emotion and the brain. His research is broadly focused on the neural bases of emotion and emotional style and methods to promote human flourishing including meditation and related contemplative practices. Studies have centered on people across the lifespan, from birth through old age. In addition, he’s conducted studies with individuals with emotional disorders such as mood and anxiety disorders and autism, as well as expert meditation practitioners with tens of thousands of hours of experience. His research uses a wide range of methods including different varieties of MRI, positron emission tomography, electroencephalography and modern genetic and epigenetic methods.
In 2014, Dr. Davidson, realizing that the neuroscientific research of the Center would not allow the widespread dissemination of the well-being practices proven in the lab, launched a nonprofit, Healthy Minds Innovations. Offering accessible products like the freely available Healthy Minds Program meditation app and a workplace program — Dr. Davidson has been able to leverage his years of research to take these key learnings out of the lab and into the palm of your hand.
All of his work is in service of his greater vision, to create a kinder, wiser, more compassionate world.
Thank you so much for doing this with us Dr. Davidson! Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share your “backstory” with us? What was it that led you to your eventual career choice?
From very early on in my life, really beginning in highschool, I knew that my life would have something to do with the mind because I had a fascination with the mind and a conviction that so much of both the problems and the opportunities in our world are connected to our minds. When I was in highschool I actually volunteered at a sleep laboratory at a hospital near us in Brooklyn, NY where I grew up, cleaning electrodes every Friday afternoon. I would take the bus from school every Friday to do this. That’s really where this all began.
I knew when I was 15 years old where my life was headed even if I didn’t know what external form it would take. But I knew that somehow it would be connected to the mind.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?
I am blessed with leading a life where virtually everything I do is exciting! We’re working on lots of exciting projects and what especially excites me these days is having our laboratory be the world. We are able to take our insights about the cultivation of well-being and the impact that this may have to different sectors in the world — it might be school teachers, it might be health care providers, it might be first responders, it might be workplace organizations — and in all of these contexts look at the impact of nurturing positive qualities of our mind on the well-being and the health of individuals.
I also have the firm conviction that the polarization and divisiveness that is so destructive in our society today is at least in part traced to a failure to nurture these qualities in ourselves. I regard this as an urgent public health need and as an urgent need for the preservation of our democracy and really nothing less than that. This both excites me and energizes me because I have the conviction that this is the most important work we could be doing.
Can you share with our readers a bit why you are an authority about the topic of the Loneliness Epidemic?
I have been studying well-being and it’s opposite, which is ill-being and the various kinds of psychopathology and distress and suffering that is associated with it (one of which is loneliness) and how these psychological qualities get under the skin and actually impact our physical health for my entire career. I’ve been studying this now for more than 40 years with more than 400 scientific publications and several books and while I still consider myself very much a student and continuously learning I also recognize that people consider us to be authorities in what we do.
Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the main focus of our interview. According to this story in Time, loneliness is becoming an increasing health threat not just in the US , but across the world. Can you articulate for our readers 3 reasons why being lonely and isolated can harm one’s health?
- Social connection is important for our well-being and physical health. It will help to reduce stress hormones and there’s very good evidence for that and it directly produces biological effects which are health promoting.
- Social connection provides an opportunity for us to receive social support. We all live lives that are interdependent and we cannot possibly survive as an island on our own, we need other people.
- Humans are social animals. They’re social creatures and human beings meant to be living with other human beings in a socially connected way — this is really part of our evolutionary history and for all these reasons — loneliness and social isolation can be destructive and social connection so important.
The irony of having a loneliness epidemic is glaring. We are living in a time where more people are connected to each other than ever before in history. Our technology has the power to connect billions of people in one network, in a way that was never possible. Yet despite this, so many people are lonely. Why is this? Can you share 3 of the main reasons why we are facing a loneliness epidemic today? Please give a story or an example for each.
I think that it is certainly true that we are more interconnected through our digital devices than we’ve ever been before in human history and in part I think that we have come to rely on that digital connection as a substitute for genuine social connection.
I think that we are learning, and I think the pandemic is helping to teach us this and particularly as we gradually come out of the pandemic and begin to reconnect in person with people, what we’ve actually been missing. While digital connectivity can be helpful, it also can be socially isolating and some of the most profound ways in which human beings interact with each other and connect with each other are lacking in the virtual spaces in which we have been living.
Personally, just a few weeks ago I went to my first professional meeting since Covid. I was with a group of professional colleagues and gave my first talk in person since the start of the pandemic and one of the things that was striking to me is how rich and really delicious this experience was, I think we’ve lulled ourselves into thinking that we can get by with the kind of connectivity that is afforded by our digital devices. Being in person is a healthy reminder that that’s just not true — and we need to be connected in a more intimate way to really flourish.
Ok. It is not enough to talk about problems without offering possible solutions. In your experience, what are the 5 things each of us can do to help solve the Loneliness Epidemic. Please give a story or an example for each.
We are exposed to so much negativity in the media, online, in the news — not just the pandemic — but all the other crises that are occurring and it can be overwhelming. The pandemic, climate change, racial injustice, it’s just horrific what’s going on — and yet — it’s really important for our future and for us to thrive to have a positive vision of what we can be like when we are flourishing.
I often remind people here of Martin Luther King’s famous speech in the 1960s and that it was not “I have a nightmare,” but rather having a dream of what is possible is so important DESPITE the conditions in which we are now living.
And in fact having this positive dream is essential in guiding us and moving us toward a healthier and more vibrant way of living.
I think if we are able to hold this positive vision it will go a long way in the promotion of human flourishing.
So what do we do?
If loneliness is the product of our mental outlook, it is therefore something that can be changed by transforming our mental outlook, along with our behavior. You can:
- Proactively reach out to loved ones and focus on staying in the moment with our friends and family when we are able to get together.
- Mentally extend thoughts and feelings of compassion to those around us — from the stranger driving in the car in the next lane over to a neighbor as they walk to their mailbox.
- Train your mind in the skills of connection with meditation; and
- Bring something positive and bridge the “connection gap” on social media. We recently launched #TheWorldWeMake in support of healing division in a highly charged, often negative space.
If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be?
That’s really a great and easy question for me to answer.
I first want to remind people that when human beings first evolved on this planet none of us were brushing our teeth and today I am sure that every person who is reading this article brushes their teeth at least a couple times a day.
This is not part of our genome. This is something we learned to do because it’s important for our personal physical hygiene.
What we’re talking about is important for our personal mental hygiene and it turns out also for our personal physical hygiene because we know that when we nourish our mind and cultivate well-being it’s good for our psychological as well as physical health.
This is an urgent public health need and we encourage people to treat their mind with the same respect that they treat their teeth by nourishing their mind every day.
To support this, we have developed a freely available app, the Healthy Minds Program, which contains instructions on how to nurture key pillars of well-being. It is freely available all over the world — and can be a path for many to support this daily attention to mental hygiene.
I would encourage your readers to explore this possibility and make a commitment to spend as much time every day nourishing your mind as you do brushing your teeth. If we all did this — the world would be a very different place.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
You can stay up to date by following both our research center, the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Healthy Minds Innovations, our nonprofit which develops well-being tools from this research on our websites, in social media, and by checking out our monthly blog on Psychology Today. You can also watch our recent free series of events, The World We Make, including The Next Decade of Well-Being on Thursday, October 28 in which myself and United States Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, discuss loneliness and the opportunity to heal division through connection.
Event Registration: https://go.wisc.edu/next-decade-wellbeing-event
Thank you for these inspirational insights. We wish you continued success in your wonderful work.
Dr. Richard J Davidson Of Healthy Minds Innovations: 5 Things We Can Each Do to Help Solve the Lone was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.